The invention relates, in part, to talking books. A wide variety of talking books are known and are disclosed in numerous U.S. Patents including at least U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,809,246; 5,356,292; 5,417,575; 5,419,705; 5,494,292; 5,645,436; and 5,803,748. On the other hand, a number of other U.S. Patents disclose different technology and schemes for generating speech from toy figures, i.e. dolls, plush animals, etc. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,752,880 and 5,636,994 disclose wireless control of the speech and/or action of a toy figure by a conventional, personal computer with appropriate software. U.S. Pat. No. 4,846,693 discloses a system in which toy figure control signals are imbedded in the video signal of a video tape and are removed by a controller associated with the video tape player and transmitted without wires to a toy figure having a receiver configured to receive them. The signals cause the figure to generate speech which relates to the video program being generated. A hand controller is provided to permit additional signals to be sent to the toy by the user for the toy to synthesize its own speech and other sounds. U.S. Pat. No. 5,733,131 discloses a system employing pager transmission technology for simultaneous remote control of several widely spaced devices which may be toy figures. The system can cause the same message to be generated by all receiving devices or specific messages to be generated by different devices.
It is believed that a new and different form of play and educational activity can be created by combining and coordinating speech generation in a book and a toy figure to provide an interactive companion/playmate to the child using the book and an unusual remote control for the toy figure.
In one aspect, the invention is a combination comprising: a talking book with a sound synthesizer, a memory operably coupled with the synthesizer and containing at least some speech data, and a speaker operably coupled with the synthesizer to reproduce sound including speech; a talking toy figure with a speech synthesizer, a memory operably coupled with the synthesizer and containing at least some speech data, and a speaker operably coupled with the synthesizer to reproduce sounds including speech; at least one of the talking book and the talking toy figure components of the combination including a processor configured to generate at least speech control signals to at least initiate speech generation by the one component and at least one speech control signal to initiate speech generation by the other component; and a communications link between the one component and the other component, each speech control signal generated by the processor for the other component being transmitted over the link from the processor to the other component.
In another aspect, the invention is a combination comprising a toy figure including an actuator operably coupled with some portion of the toy figure to animate the portion of the toy figure when the actuator is operated; a remote control for the toy figure in the form of a book having a pair of outer covers with printed matter on at least one of the covers and a transmission link operably coupling the book remote control with the actuator of the toy figure.
In another aspect, the invention is a combination comprising: a toy figure with a sound synthesizer, a memory operably coupled with the synthesizer and containing at least some speech data, a speaker operably coupled with the synthesizer to reproduce speech, and a processor operably coupled with at least the synthesizer, the processor being configured to at least generate at least some speech control signals to initiate speech generation by the synthesizer and animation signals for the toy figure; a remote control for the toy figure in the form of a book with a processor, the processor being configured to at least generate control signals to initiate sound generation by the synthesizer; and a communications link between the book and the toy figure operably coupling together the processor of the book and the synthesizer of the toy figure.